Preliminary hearing for teen accused in Lambo theft

(KGO)

October 9, 2012 1:59:23 PM PDT

MARIN COUNTY, Calif. --

Testimony began in Marin County Superior Court Tuesday morning in the preliminary hearing for Max Wade, the San Rafael teenager charged with the attempted murder of two other teens and the theft of celebrity chef Guy Fieri's yellow Lamborghini.

Landon Wahlstrom, 19, and Eva Dedier, 18, described how a motorcyclist dressed in black fired five to six rounds at them as they sat in Wahlstrom's parked Dodge truck on Evergreen Drive in Mill Valley at about 11:30 a.m. on April 13.

Wahlstrom testified that the motorcycle pulled up alongside the driver's side of the truck and the rider "reached frantically for a gun."

"I looked down the barrel, ducked, and the bullets started flying," Wahlstrom said.

He said the gun was a black revolver with a wooden handle, similar to a .38 Special.

Dedier testified that the motorcycle rider stared at them for a few seconds before firing.

"Landon put my head down. We were ducking," Dedier said. Both suffered cuts from the glass that was shattered by the bullets but neither was shot. They did not get a glimpse of the shooter's face behind the dark-tinted visor of his black helmet, they said.

Deputy District Attorney Yvette Martinez called the shootings "an attempted assassination" when she argued against allowing still and video cameras in the courtroom.

She also said there is evidence that there are people trying to free Wade from the Marin County Jail. An attempt to break him out of Juvenile Hall on his 18th birthday on Aug. 10 failed.

Wahlstrom said he knew Wade from middle school, and Dedier said she had a friendly relationship with Wade, who supplied her and her friends with counterfeit identification cards.

She said Wade was driving a Lamborghini once or twice when he met her to deliver the fake IDs.

Dedier said that two months before the shooting, Wade told her he was going to jail and that if she needed another fake ID she should get one quickly.

The prosecution has alleged that Wade was trying to impress Dedier with the Lamborghini, and that he may have shot at the couple because he felt Dedier had spurned him.

The bright-yellow Lamborghini, said to be valued at more than $200,000, was stolen from a San Francisco dealership in 2011.

Police said after the crime that someone had rappelled down from the roof of the British Motor Car Distributors building on Van Ness Avenue early the morning of March 8, 2011, entered through a window, then drove away in the car.

Surveillance video obtained from the Golden Gate Bridge and the town of Tiburon captured the Lamborghini driving by after the theft. It was found in a storage locker in Point Richmond in late April as authorities were investigating the Mill Valley shooting.

Wade has been charged with attempted murder, shooting into an occupied vehicle, burglary, auto theft, possession of a stolen car and driving a stolen car.